A Harebrained Scheme
by Abel Sephaos
Summary: Blake always knew she had a thing for blonds, especially those with blue eyes and a charming smile. It had always been a problem, one she thought she could get over. Had someone told her that it would have been Jaune Arc to ultimately catch her attention, she would have laughed them out of Beacon. Now, she wasn't so sure what to think, other than she really wanted his tail.


_A Harebrained Scheme_

 _Chapter 1, Bad Moon Rising_

I do not own anything pertaining to the RWBY universe. No stocks, no stakes in RT, nothing. Don't even own any merchandise.

Well, the idea wouldn't leave me alone, so I decided to write it out. There have been plenty of stories revolving around this particular trope, but... why the hell not have another?

This will be exclusively Knightshade, just so you know.

I have another idea revolving around V5 for a darker take on the fight for Haven, but I'm going to leave that one for another time.

Let's just pretend Chapter 2 wasn't a thing, I'll do my best to fix it when I'm not running a super high temp and taking strong medicine that makes me groggy. Sorry for disappointing, hopefully my next attempt is better so I can get to the meat of what I have planned.

 **[HS]**

It was nearing midnight in Vale, the shattered moon looming ominously in the heavens above. Pale light glistened through the large, ornate windows of the west wing of Beacon, illuminating the path of Blake Belladonna as she moodily stalked towards the locker room after parting ways with her partner, Yang Xiao Long.

Her bow twitched rapidly as her ears tried to pan either way to listen to her surroundings despite their heavy bindings, another sign of her immense irritation beyond the almost indecipherable frown etched upon her face.

Two weeks had passed since the Dance, two weeks since Sun Wukong had started to avoid her like the plague. She had almost thought for a moment his feelings had been genuine, that his suave words weren't like those of his best friend, Neptune. Blake had been wrong in her assumptions, and it stung her in ways that she had never quite felt before, even with Adam.

It seemed that Sun's affection ended where her desires began, and the thought of opening up to someone as she had, only to have him run away with his tail tucked between his legs made her stomach turn unpleasantly.

The few times she _had_ been able to catch sight of Sun, he had quickly made himself scarce, as did his blue haired partner. Neptune had to know as well, as the boy refused to so much as glance in her direction, let alone meet her eyes when they passed in the halls.

Blake felt her heart beat a bit faster from the sudden spike of anger she felt before she drew in a deep breath. She did her best to squash the betrayed feeling once more before it consumed the rest of her night and prevented her from sleeping.

The icing on the cake for her, however, was when she caught sight of Sun flirting with the upper year student Blake knew was named Velvet, the Rabbit Faunus Cardin used to bully before Jaune Arc set him straight in Forever Falls.

Blake wasn't a violent person at heart, she really wasn't, but she felt pretty violent for a few days afterwards. It got so bad within Team RWBY's dorm that Weiss and Ruby had convinced Yang, behind her back, to speak with her and try to figure out why she was acting so moody again.

Yang was forced to beat it out of her, of course, and for the first time in her life, Blake found herself enjoying the cathartic feeling of punching someone in the ovaries.

Taking a deep breath once more, Blake caught a whiff of the scent of sweat, causing her to wrinkle her nose slightly before quickening her pace once more.

'Yang was taking things almost _personally_ tonight.' Blake winced as she put too much of her weight on her right leg, sending jolts of pain racing up and down her back. 'I need to get things figured out, and soon... I also need a better way to vent my frustration.'

Finding herself at the entrance to the large locker room shared by the rest of the first years at Beacon, Blake shook herself free from her aching limbs and racing thoughts before making her way to her assigned locker.

After putting away her combat gear and grabbing up her spare change of clothes and shower bag, the black haired Faunus made her way towards the shower room sluggishly. Unlike every other night she had found herself bathing in the public showers, there seemed to have been another occupant within the large space.

The sound of gushing water was not coming from the females side, however, causing Blake to shrug and dismiss the other occupant all together. Despite there being only one large shower room, it had been divided by a tile wall some time after the complaints became too much for the staff to ignore.

Gathering up her cascading, ebony hair into a single hand after plucking her bow from its place on her head, Blake slipped out of her black tank top and shorts quickly before stepping beneath the furthest shower head from the tiled wall.

It took a few minutes of lathering and rinsing to get her thick hair clean from the sweat collected within the bulky mass of black, a few minutes she spent trying to wrest her thoughts away from the bitter subject she pondered on the way to the shower room.

Her ears began to twitch again, this time due to a rivulet of water deciding it wanted to direct itself into her inner ear canals, causing her to shake her head and almost hiss in irritation. Stepping backwards from being directly beneath the shower head, the water shut off and cast the room in silence once more beyond the other occupant.

The sound of footsteps caught Blake's attention as she tilted her head to the left and right to empty the water from all four of her ears, but the voice that sounded out afterwards caused her to pause entirely.

"Jaune?" Came the muffled voice of Lie Ren from the other side of the tiled wall, "Oh damn, she... really did a number on you tonight, didn't she?"

The way his voice dipped as he trailed off at the end denoted anger, something else that caught Blake's attention outside the strangeness of overhearing a conversation between two members of Team RWBY's sister team, Team JNPR.

"It's not that bad, really." Jaune answered back as the water shut off entirely, most likely having stepped back from the shower as Blake had, "She's just trying to help."

"You say that every time I have to bring you ointment, Jaune." Ren sighed heavily, his voice, while low, carrying over the wall easily with an echo. "This... this is just too much, you can't keep doing this to yourself."

"If this is the price I have to pay to get stronger, then I'll pay it forward ten times over." Jaune seemed to not believe his own words, the bass in his voice failing for all of a moment as his breath hitched, likely in pain. "Sorry, I'm good, just get it on there please."

Blake felt her brows furrowing further and further as the two spoke and tried to make her way out of the bathroom without being heard, knowing it was too late for her to step beneath the shower once more without drawing attention towards herself. Ren was intelligent, almost scarily so. He would know she had been standing idly and had overheard their conversation instantly.

The sound of water splashing beneath her feet caused her to pause, her stomach dropping slightly upon hearing the loud noise. The two continued to speak, however, without paying the noise any mind, leaving Blake to sigh and resign herself to waiting until the two were long gone before finishing her shower.

It didn't help that she found herself morbidly curious as to just what the two were talking about, though she had a feeling she already knew what it was.

Pyrrha Nikos, Jaune's partner, had been training him on the rooftops nearly every night for the past two months, and it showed. The blond had gone from being a bumbling fool with a sharp stick to a slightly competent fool with a sharp stick, a great uptick in standing for just two months, in Blake's opinion.

It also helped that he had backed off of her teammate, Weiss Schnee, and gave Team RWBY an almost wide berth when he saw them. Everyone knew of his infatuation with the silver haired teenager, but he seemed to have either reigned it in or curbed it completely since Weiss had asked Neptune Vasilias to the Dance after rejecting Jaune's attempt to ask her out rather harshly.

She couldn't blame either party, really. Jaune hadn't taken the hint that she just wasn't into him, causing her to respond with perhaps more vitriol than she had intended. She also didn't blame Jaune for giving them all their space, or as it was more commonly known, outright avoiding them. It had to have stung to be shot down in such a public manner, and his social standing at Beacon hadn't been the best anyway.

Either way, his new reclusive attitude and slightly more confident stance when failing miserably at fighting did wonders for painting him in a slightly better light in her eyes.

She had a feeling though, that the uptick in aptitude had a large downside to it, and one that Blake sorely hoped wasn't what she assumed it was.

"You look frustrated, Jaune." Ren calmly spoke after a few more tense moments of silence, almost long enough to make Blake fear she had been caught eavesdropping. "I'm sorry if I upset you, my friend, that was not my intention."

"No, no, you're good, man," Jaune spoke up a bit more quickly than Ren had, his voice reassuring and almost embarrassed, "I've just got a lot on my mind right now, sorry."

"You can't apologize to someone who just apologized to you, Jaune." Ren sighed once more, though there was a small chortle of laughter disguised within, "Pyrrha really _is_ rubbing off on you too much, you need to take a break before you start wearing bronze."

"Eh, I don't think it would look all that bad on me, honestly." Jaune attempted to joke, though it seemed that he was leveled with one of Ren's patented lazy glares. "Stop looking at me like that, I didn't even do anything. Ouch! Stop tugging on that, what are you doing?!"

"You've been keeping it bound again, haven't you?" Ren seemed stern, causing Blake to raise a brow once more at the turn in conversation, "I thought we talked about this, Jaune."

"I almost got found out again." Jaune's voice was weak once more, as if he were glancing downwards as he spoke.

It was sad that Blake could imagine their facial expressions as they spoke, especially considering how little she interacted with the two male members of Team JNPR. She needed to stop people watching before said people started calling her creepy.

She had a bad enough time in Vacuo as it was, at least among the White Fang members, for that very reason.

"Who was it this time, Cardin again?" Ren was obviously exasperated, his voice rising just enough to denote as such, "I'm starting to think you might be a masochist, Jaune."

"A whosa-kiss?" Jaune obviously didn't know what a masochist was, causing both Ren and Blake to palm their faces in exasperation, only Ren's being audible enough to hear.

"Do you _enjoy_ the pain, Jaune? Is that why you're so eager to throw yourself in front of Pyrrha five days a week?" Ren was being serious this time, any traces of humor draining from his voice instantly.

There was a brief pause, and Blake wasn't so sure she should be listening any more. Despite the feeling of guilt welling up, however, her interest had peaked to a new level upon hearing the last few tidbits.

'What's this about Jaune having a tail?' Blake questioned almost aloud, stopping herself just before she could, 'Isn't he Human?'

It was the only thing that made sense to her, as far as context went. The only type of hidden appendage one could tug on was either a Tail, or a Tail, and Blake knew her way around both.

"The pain lets me know I'm doing something right, Ren. If I shirked away from every blow aimed my way, what kind of Huntsman would I be?" Jaune eventually posed a rhetorical question, though Ren seemed intent on answering anyway.

"There's a difference between taking necessary hits and willingly allowing yourself to be beaten into the dirt by someone far superior to you in skill." The sound of a lid being screwed on echoed out soon after Ren spoke, "That should do it, Jaune. I'm going to head back, Nora mentioned a sleep over and I need to hide the syrup before this happens."

"Thanks, Ren, I appreciate it." Jaune spoke weakly as the sound of footsteps rang out once more, Ren obviously departing for the dorm room of Team JNPR once more, "You'll cover for me tonight, yeah?"

"You aren't coming back again?" Ren paused for a moment, his voice ringing out from near the doorway of the mens side, "Why?"

"I uh, it's just... _that_. _Again._ " Jaune sighed heavily after speaking, more embarrassment evident in his voice yet again, "I don't know how long it will be this time, don't want to risk it again."

"That's just... well, I'll just tell them you went into town, that way you can come back in case you take care of your... problem, in time." Ren's voice had become so strained that Blake was certain he was close to bolting from the bathroom. "See you, Jaune."

Once more, the sound of Ren's footsteps echoed out and grew more and more distant, leaving Blake and Jaune alone in the bathroom dedicated to first years once more.

The more Blake heard of the conversation, the closer she had crept towards the tiled wall against her will, almost entirely unaware of what was happening until it was too late.

Reaching upwards, her arms proved just long enough to pull herself upwards to peak through the slim gap between the two sides of the bathroom near the ceiling. A single amber eye peered past the steam and haze hanging within the mens side before widening tremendously.

Jaune Arc was a much different figure naked than he had been fully clothed, no matter what he was garbed in. His back was to her, giving her the perfect view of his backside, wholly unobstructed by the lingering vapor in the air thanks to her heightened vision granted to all who shared her species.

His back was sculpted in all of the right ways to make Blake blink in shock. She had seen quite a large swath of exposed skin when he had worn a dress to the dance thanks to some sort of bet between himself and his partner, but it had been only in passing, and she had been distracted by... other things, at the time.

She knew she shouldn't be trying to peep at Jaune, of _all people_ , in the shower, but her curiosity over the two subjects brought to light by Ren proved too much for her to ignore.

Blake allowed her amber gaze to trace lower on his body, almost relishing the way his muscles roiled beneath his skin as he shakily rose his hands above his head to stretch. What she didn't relish, however, was the way the green and purple splotches dotted across his body roiled as well.

Pyrrha had obviously not pulled any punches when it came to training Jaune, but Blake thought perhaps she should have. She had been matched up with the crimson haired hoplite in Professor Goodwitch's class plenty of times though out the year, and each bout resulted in Blake's loss.

Despite her losses, however, Blake had _never_ come out looking quite as bad as Jaune was in that moment.

Beyond the sickly bruising covering his back, ribs and in some spots, his shoulders, Blake found her attention drawn to something else entirely, something that made her breath hitch in her throat.

At first, she had assumed that it was just a cloud of vapor, or perhaps a trick of her eyes, but it was only when the ball of fluff tucked neatly above his sculpted buttocks began to twitch that Blake realized just what she was looking at.

Jaune Arc, the supposed Human, had a tail. Not just any type of tail, however, but one that Blake found oddly adorable. It was white, and poofy, and larger than it had any right to be to have been so skillfully hidden that even _she_ hadn't noticed.

Somehow, the blond knight wannabe had hidden the fact that he was a Rabbit Faunus from everyone, even _her,_ a former member of the White Fang and practical 'Princess' of Menagerie.

The longer she watched Jaune slowly stretch his body as he allowed himself to drip dry, the harder Blake felt her heart beat in her throat.

Any thoughts of another blond flew from her mind nigh instantly. Sun? Sun who? Was it morning already?

She was forced to eventually drop down from her position when the blond bent forward to pick up his discarded towel, just enough so that she was able to get a quick view of his _other_ tail from beneath the large ball of white.

The saying that cats always land on their feet was not quite as true as people would like to believe.


End file.
